Hi all, Some odd emails are arriving. Such as, from the local Theater, announcing that my tickets to Twelfth Night are canceled, as are performances of The Bacchae and a new work called CenterPlay.
Canceled by what? A non-living yet self-reproducing molecule. An ironic creator of empty theaters, unplayed plays both Shakespearean and hockey. How novel! I got another email from the Public Broadcasting System called "what you need to know about the Novel Coronavirus." Novel, is a word, it means book, or narrative, new narrative, nouvelle, and in this sense is old as Don Quixote or Moll Flanders, not that new anymore (though perhaps newer than Hamlet Prince of Denmark). At one time it meant "the new books" arguably, neobiblia, novi libri. Corona means crown, but going farther back meant garland for military service, from the PIE "bend," as in, you bend a branch of leaves so that you can place it on someone's head, "they fought." (Art is from a similar PIE root for joint, arthritis, arm, a bend that bends?) An identifier of something done and of identification. Virus means poisonous fluid, possibly from PIE "ueis-" to melt away, flow, rot perhaps? I often think of the PIE root weid- to see, but I don't know if they are related. Flow, see? I try to imagine two hominids trying to talk to each other at some point, one more motivated, the other patient, one scribbling with a stick or spoken words, saying "see? see what I mean?" scribble scribble chatter chatter. So, book-garland-poisonflow? In any case, it all seems very like haunting, very like memory. The novel is what we don't know yet, right? A virus isn't new if we have memory of it. Our whole immune system is like a library. We each have our own, but we also are part of each other's. Similar perhaps to how libraries are connected. All of which calls to mind Hippocrates I think. Best regards, Max https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=novel https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=corona https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=virus https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=vision https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=art https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=medicine https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Telomere-structure-A-Telomeres-are-composed-by-a-double-strand-region_fig2_323523320 Chapter Four: Hippocratic Medicine and Greek Tragedy https://brill.com/view/book/9789004232549/B9789004232549-s005.xml https://www.etymonline.com/word/*weid-?ref=etymonline_crossreference https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=*weis- PS - sadly or happily, that same Public Broadcasting Service email announces Niall Ferguson's new TV show Networld, tragically or comically, debuting on March 17, the night I was supposed to see Twelfth Night, the night on which Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. https://www.pbs.org/video/niall-fergusons-networld-preview-cpi5cf/?utm_source=whattowatchnews&utm_medium=email&utm_term=secondarypromo6&utm_content=20200228&utm_campaign=networld_2020
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